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Ox Tail Soup

A hearty soup made with ox tails, onions, carrots, turnip, flour, pepper, water, and arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and arrowroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ox Tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the broth

  1. Combine the ox tails, onions, carrots, turnip, flour, pepper, and water in a large pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for 2 hours.

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove the ox tails from the pot.

  2. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  3. Return the bones to the pot.

  4. Boil for an additional hour.

Finish the soup

  1. Strain the soup.

  2. Rinse the arrowroot.

  3. Add the arrowroot and the cut meat back to the soup.

  4. Boil for 15 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Turnip + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Flour + arrowroottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together525 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ox tails
Their connective tissue breaks down during long simmering, giving the soup body and richness.
Flour
Starch that thickens the liquid as it heats, adding body to the soup.
Arrowroot
Starch that thickens the soup as it heats, giving a smooth, glossy texture.
Onions
Release sweetness and savory aroma into the broth during simmering.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and earthy flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the arrowroot. Arrowroot thickens as it heats, but prolonged boiling can break down its starch and thin the soup again. Keep the final boil short so the soup stays thick.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, flour, pepper, arrowroot):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, flour, pepper, arrowroot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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